CFP: [American] Cannibal, Sadist, Addict: W. B. Seabrook and the Popular Cultures of U.S. Imperialism

William Buehler Seabrook (1884-1945) was an adventurer and best-sellingLost Generation writer whose influence on U.S. and global popular culturehas been massive but critically neglected. Seabrook was best known forhis sensational anthropological adventures, The Magic Island (1929), achronicle of his stay in U.S. occupied-Haiti and participation in voudun;and Jungle Ways (1930), a record of his immersion among several tribalpeoples in the CÃ´te dâ€™Ivoire, Liberia, and Mali, in his quest to commitcannibalism in a racially authentic setting. The Magic Island inspiredthe first wave of zombie films of the 1930s, most notably White Zombie(1932); his memoir of his residence in a clinic to cure his alcoholism,Asylum (1932), inaugurated the genre of the rehab memoir. Seabrook, whoalso dabbled in the occult, sensory deprivation, and sadism, consistentlysought out the limits of human experience, which he frequently conceivedas the white experience of racial alterity. He was thus also obsessedwith white men who had figuratively become black: Faustin Wirkus, theU.S. marine who became â€œthe white king of La Gonaveâ€ during the U.S.occupation of Haiti, and PÃ¨re Yakouba, the Frenchman he immortalized asThe White Monk of Timbuctoo (1934). Seabrook is ripe for critical revivalbeginning with a panel at MLA in San Francisco in December â€" or if youâ€™requick to respond, ASA in Albuquerque in October â€" because his oeuvreengaged popular and elite attitudes to the relationships between racialidentity, U.S. imperialism, masculinity, the avant-garde, and sexualfreedom. Papers on any Seabrook text or aspect of his work and life arewelcome. Please send a brief proposal and cv to Susan Zieger atsusan.zieger_at_ucr.edu. For ASA, by Jan. 21; for MLA, by Mar. 1.